Damien Valentine 00:04
I'm Damien Valentine and check out Heir to the Empire

Tracy Harwood 00:10
I'm Tracy Harwood and I'm academic!

Ricky Grove 00:13
I'm Ricky Grove!

Phil Rice 00:23
Hi, my name is Phil. Hi, I'm Phil Rice.

Ricky Grove 00:27
Perfect. That's all we need.

Tracy Harwood 00:39
Hello, and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima Podcast. I'm Tracy Harwood. I'm one of the hosts. And I'm here today with Ricky Grove, Phil Rice and Danian Valentine. Hello. Still running away from the paperazzi, I'm sure

Damien Valentine 00:57
hidden my location with this green screen.

Tracy Harwood 00:59
Thank you. That's really, really appreciated. Yeah. Now, this month, we've got some really, really great pics for you. Some are made in Unreal. We've also got a Half Life 2 pick and a No Man's Sky pick. And we're excited to talk to you about all of these. But also, we've also got some other projects that we'll share with you on our blog and some news updates on the technologies that we've been covering also on the blogs and some general texts and also a few updates on the creative AI genies that we've been following. Ricky, I think you've got an update that you wanted to share before we get

Ricky Grove 01:38
Yeah, I my, I love ultra wide screens. Mostly because it for the work that I do the graphic arts works, because it the widescreen allows me to put pages together three large pages that way, I can move back and forth easily. But it's also pretty cool for gaming, but it died. And so I did some research. And I came up with a really good $400 ultra widescreen monitor by Gigabyte, which is unusual, because Gigabyte is known for making monitors. You know, LG and other companies are the ones who do it. So I ordered it, got it and set it up and love it. It's great. Although the difference, a little difference here is that it's widescreen, it's curved. And I'm still trying to get used to some of the curved you know, the change in the way images stretch a little bit but the curve, you keep thinking there's something wrong with the settings. But no, it's not. I've been playing Elden Ring, of course. And the problem with Elden Ring is that the only way to get an ultra widescreen resolution for 4410 width wide is with a mod which is strange because the game is such an amazing game. And it's so well coded you think that built that in for ultrawide monitors because gamers are crazy about technology and they love their ultra wide monitor and and it is beautiful when you have it on a big wide screen. And also movies certain movies you can watch on ultra wide screen which is great. But the mod you get it you can use to fix the Elden ring is available for free, we'll put a link to it. If you're interested in that. However, you have to do a couple of things, which are a little frumpy one is you have to disable the anti-cheat mechanism in the game. And you have to be offline. And I worry that I'm going to do that and then forget and go back online. And suddenly they're like, Oh, my You're using a mod, you're banned, you know that. Can't do that. But in any event, I'm really happy with it. We'll put the link to it. I can't remember the the you know, they have such odd names, numbers and names and letters and everything. But it's by Gigabyte. It's an ultra wide monitor. It's really new, good reviews about $400. And it's excellent. I really like it.

Tracy Harwood 04:15
Brilliant.

Phil Rice 04:16
And it's a really good price for an ultra wide Ricky I've noticed for myself and for customers too. And $400 is a great price. My goodness.

Ricky Grove 04:24
Yep. Yeah. And it comes what I'm amazed with when it comes with HDMI cables, and three different power adapters, depending on whether they're in Europe or Asia or the United States. So you can plug it right into you know, whatever country you're in just fine, nice and all of its free because the HDMI cable itself is 20 bucks. 25 bucks. So that's cool. I wanted to ask you, excuse me Tracy. I wanted to ask you you are talking about wanting to have a brief discussion of the actor strike?

Phil Rice 05:00
Yeah, well, I really just had I kind of thought about how to keep it as brief as possible and really just boils down to one question like, whether we're talking about the actor strike or the writer strike. When, when someone is a member of of, you know, that union or guild or whatever the terminology is, forgive me, I'm a dunce on this. But when there's a strike going on, does that basically mean that that someone who's a member of that union, they can't work at all without violating the terms that strike like whether or not the work they take is freelance or for union contracts or non union stuff, but they're expected to just not work at all? Is that right?

Ricky Grove 05:40
Well, the legal definition is That's right. They keep they can work. However, in practice, people don't cross most people don't cross Union lines because then they're labelled scabs. However, they do take freelance work that's non union, although that's technically wrong, but people do it anyway. Because they have to eat.

Phil Rice 06:01
Yeah, yeah, that's that was my thinking is okay. For big stars who have a, you know, a big nest egg. You know, going however, long weeks, maybe months without work is maybe not that big of a hardship. But for your average person who's, you know, just a freelance writer or an actor, that could be devastating. And I was just, I was curious how that's coped with because this isn't the first such strike there's been so people fudge

Ricky Grove 06:27
it, yeah. People thought, Okay. Okay. I'd like to say quickly that the, this is a very significant strike, because it's about just like past strikes by any Labour Organisation. It comes usually after a technology change. For example, 1981, one of the biggest strikes in the Writers Guild history had to do with residuals for television, back in the 50s, because television just started to become a big market. And I'm astounded that they didn't do anything, have negotiations about it before, it became big, because you could see it was going to be a huge thing. Well, in this by the same token, this strike is about technology. It's about streaming technology, and about the upcoming AI, use of AI in generating actors' images. Now, the actor images AI thing, it's gotten a lot of press. And it's a bit overblown. Because that technology really doesn't exist, it's much too expensive. And the legal issues of it are fairly cut and dry. However, the streaming services are much more serious. For example, there was a large, long series of articles on most of the actors from Oranges, the new Black Series, which was a huge hit. While on Netflix, one of the major stars who had a large, big contract on the television series, ended up getting something like four bucks in residuals from Netflix. And so they they started asking questions, you know, why is this fair, and they couldn't get answers, because it was the perfect scenario for corporate a company in that the way these things are determined, are so ambiguous and so multi layered, that they can, they can hide things they can, especially if they if they if their goal is to make more money for themselves, and screw everybody else. They can hide stuff and keep people from knowing. So the strike now is for renegotiating those terms, so that they're more favourable, and they're more like residuals for television. That's what it's about. And the large corporations don't want to do that. Because their bottom line is money, not the ethics of the situation. And it's a shame because if, if both sides would compromise, they could come to a conclusion pretty quickly, give a decent residual ways, money for streaming services, but you know, make sure that it's not too much. But they don't even want to do that. And that's the problem. And that's why the actors are on strike, and they'll stay on, I predict this will be a long strike, because they're not going to give up that in the streaming services. The streaming services are only getting better and better and better. Yeah, there it reached the kind of, of what's the word of kind of a point where there were so many people using streaming services, they weren't advancing much anymore, but that's passed and they've moved on to another level of it. Plus, it's complicated by the fact that many of the streaming services are also production companies, which I think might down the line result in a lawsuit separating that ability so that they can't determine they can't be the company that makes it and then also determines how and screams it. It's just like the old vertical integration back in the 50s. For the theatre, the main studios like universal owned all the theatres, while the Supreme Court and made a huge decision cut all that out. They had to separate all the businesses. So that's it's it's a big deal. And I'm with them, I'm in favour. But I do think there should be given take on each side, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Phil Rice 10:34
Incidentally, not not to overcomplicate things by recommending a streaming show. Folk, right, if any of you watch the Netflix original series Black Mirror, in the new season of Black Mirror, I think it's this season six, the very first episode deals with in a kind of science fictiony context, taking this whole notion of using a combination of AI and a quantum computer, and digital persona of a celebrity, appropriating their image and buying it and then using it. It is extraordinary. It's also very entertaining and very funny. But the very first episode of season six is called Joan is Awful. And it's and it's about a well, let's call it a Netflix is a Netflix show about a Netflix type company with a very similar logo called Stream Berry. That this girl comes home from work one day, and there's a show on Netflix, starring Salma Hayek, but with her hair, her hairstyle, and it is her life from that very day. Oh, my goodness. And basically, they go into how that all happened. And And essentially, it has to do with the data mining that happens with our phones and computers. And the listening that people are paranoid about on phones and and Alexa devices and things like that, that they appropriated all this from a consumer and then produced the show and AI produce produces the whole thing - its fascinating. This this this season was released maybe a couple of weeks before the strike. Wow, what an interest. I don't think there's necessarily a cause effect there. But it's interesting timing, because it really does show just how bad it could be. You're not familiar with Black Mirror, Black Mirror is like Twilight Zone except almost every time everything goes horribly wrong, like as bad as it could done wasn't always that way. Yeah, this one is yeah, and it's always technology themes. So it's very interesting, but that one was just so on the money. So I recommend checking that episode out.

Damien Valentine 13:00
Not quite as in depth as that. But the new season of Futurama just started as well. And the first episode of that deals with the fact that they've been cancelled and renewed so many times over the last 20 years, they decided to make a whole episode poking fun at the way TV shows are made. And some of the things they bring up in that. So spot on with what's happening now, even though this would have to be written at least a year ago, because of all the time it takes to animate an episode like that. Sure. And I just watched it. I thought this is so topical.

Phil Rice 13:34
I feel like this stuff. This stuff has been bubbling up for a while

Tracy Harwood 13:37
No, it's been bubbling up for years and years

Phil Rice 13:39
really just just kind of a break point. Okay, now it's time to take a stand and do something about this. So well.

Ricky Grove 13:47
There's also the side note on the legal aspects of AI generation, because courts haven't ruled on any of that yet, right? There are multiple lawsuits going on. And you know how slow it takes to a lawsuit like that to get so it's gonna be another year or two before some sort of legal standards are set. Right.

Tracy Harwood 14:07
I heard we might get the outcome of the first get, you know, the Copyright Office's some of the discussion that's going on there. I heard that we'd probably get it before the end of the year. But, you know, how are

Phil Rice 14:20
we encouraging? Well, then I would guess, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 14:24
That was my understanding. But we'll see how that unfolds. So it's really interesting times to see how this unfolds, I think. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 14:32
All right. Shall we move on to our first pick?

Tracy Harwood 14:36
Well, hang on. Before we do that, let's just take a moment to remind people what Phil's been working on. So do you want to just fill us in on the Machiniplex project?

Phil Rice 14:46
Yeah, the mission of Plex collection is what we're calling it is a upscale slash remaster slash revival of some handpicked great machinima films from machinimas decades of stuff, I mean, their stuff from the very earliest days 1998 or so, all the way up through about 2008, I think is the most recent picture there. And you know, it's just a handpicked selection that we actually did back then, in the mid 2000s. You know, 2006 to 2008 is when these were selected and assembled, right, and now they've been upscaled and revived and there's a Vimeo collection. The URL will be in the notes, but it's a fairly easy one to remember if you wanted to just get it from listening here. It is Bitly, which is bit.ly/Machiniplex. And Machiniplex well is spelled like machinima, except it has Plex on me. Okay. So that is up, we've got a trailer that's out for it, which I've pushed out on a couple different platforms now including Instagram. I put it over on TikTok. It got about 800 views in a day. Cool, which is amazing. And that, because that's that's probably not filled with an audience that would have ever seen any of that stuff before.

Tracy Harwood 16:15
You know, that was probably me trying to figure out how to use TikTok, 100 times.

Phil Rice 16:21
Right, right. Anyway, so yeah, that's where that is at, we're gonna have links to it all over our site and blog. But if you want to jump straight to it, it's Bit.ly slash Machiniplex. And there's about 25, somewhere between 25 and 30. Just really solid pieces of work over there in the best quality that we can manage. And, you know, based on the limitations of how they were originally made, but it's just some great work. And I guess I want to contextualise it as such, if you listen to this show much, you'll hear us critique stuff that we you know, stumble upon films that we stumble upon nowadays. And if you've ever wondered what the basis is for that critique what we're comparing machinima to, we're not comparing it to stuff we go home and watch on Netflix at night or Hollywood this or that. What we're comparing it to is what we have seen achieved in this medium, with far greater number of limitations than we have to produce stuff today. And I mean, some of it when you see this stuff in this collection, some of it really is mind blowing. When you contextualise it with when this was done. It's It's It's hard to believe, really. That's what we're comparing it to is the the careful, deliberate and artistic approach that people used in machinima. And use in machinima when it's at its best. That's what we're comparing stuff to even if we don't reference those films, specifically all the time. We've seen that. And so when we see stuff now, we can't help but wait, you know, that's, that's what forms the basis of okay, what is possible. So if you're interested in that, and seeing some of these you would never guess were made then like some of them if they were released tomorrow. It would fit right in. It's just so good. Not just in terms of story craft, but in terms of visual craft. Lainy Voom has a couple films in there. She's this mystery woman that no one knows where she is now. But she was absolutely one of the one of the greatest artists to ever use this medium. Yep. And there's there's tonnes of other selection, a wide variety. There's some comedy, there's some drama, there's some stuff that's just pure art and poetry. Yeah, there's musical things. It's beautiful. So I encourage you to check it out. That's all.

Ricky Grove 18:58
We have the link in the show notes for this episode. Yeah, absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 19:03
But there's one more thing before we move on because I know you've been working on this for a little while, which is a showcase of some of Hugh Hancock's work. And on the fourth of August before this episode, the first episode we're gonna be talking about the the film that we're gonna be talking about in a minute goes out. There's a trailer to Bloodspell that's going to be released or has been released on the fourth of August. And then on the 11th of August, Phil, you've got a really interesting response that you made to Bloodspell and all the hoopla around it at the time. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that as well?

Phil Rice 19:41
Yeah, so I've I wanted to have some build up leading up to when we showcase his work. I've set up a similar type of destination at Vimeo that has all of his major machinima works upscaled and remaster if you will, and available there, but the main feature film Bloodspell, I really wanted to have it be in proper 16 by 9 and 1080P and put it on YouTube where it'll get the the most possible the largest possible audience that it can because it's I think it's it's a terrific piece of work. Full disclosure, I worked on the sound on it and some of the music on it. So I'm not without a dog in this race, but it's a good film. And it's very entertaining. And I think he considered it is his greatest greatest achievement or great one of his great achievements. So yeah, on August 4 is the trailer, was the trailer. The week after that is a so I was doing a podcast even back then called The Overcast. And when he was first promoting Bloodspell, you had a lot of bravado, he was not shy about his opinions, he lacked no confidence whatsoever. He spoke big everything, you know, if if Hugh were a state, he would be Texas. You know, we're just everything is big and the best and you know, we're the first and this is the greatest and and once you got to know him, you the interesting thing is underneath all of that he's a very humble man. He was a very humble man. But you'd never know that from his public persona. You'd think he was the most arrogant sob you'd ever met in your life,

Ricky Grove 21:38
Jodphurs and a big, you know, mega megaphone them.

Phil Rice 21:42
That's just how he promoted his work. And it's just the character that he assumed when he did that. Well, a lot of people in the what was then the machinima community, naturally, you know, got feathers ruffled by that and you know, how can he say these things, you know, it's not the greatest this the greatest that or whatever. And what it reminded me of was an earlier incident that happened decades earlier with the Beatles were John Lennon in a press conference, just speaking off the cuff said, you know, by my reckoning, The Beatles are greater than Jesus Christ, talking about how many people are into the Beatles, and how fast the, you know, Beatlemania has grown. And of course, you know, people were repulsed by that. And there were record burning ceremonies and all this stuff. And he had to backtrack and apologise. And I thought, yeah, that's kind of where Hugh's put himself with this in a much smaller context. So I did a fake press conference on my podcast, highlighting a comment where he said Bloodspell's bigger than Jesus. And then all his cohorts is his fellow members of Strange Company, are scrambling to explain his remarks and stuff. And it was just an audio form. And it was just on a podcast that was probably heard by 100 people. And that was it. And I uncovered that when I was going through and gathering together all this stuff about Hugh and used a little animation software to just quickly put together this kind of silly animation of that same audio. So that's going to be the week after the trailer. Cool. And people get to experience that. And I've even got a little bit of explanation for it. That is available as well. And then, so two weeks after the trailer, on a Friday will be the the re-release of his the movie Bloodspell in full, the greatest movie ever made the greatest movie ever made in any medium, ever.

Tracy Harwood 23:41
Excellent. That's amazing. Well, that's definitely something to look forward to. However, let's move on to the film that we're going to be talking about. So I hope you've enjoyed that little bit of backtrack from us. And let's move on. Now, super ironically, I think and weirdly, three of us this month have independently picked films which have a bit of a dream theme to them. Which is, which is amazing. I think

Phil Rice 24:11
I blame Bed Bananas for that. Indeed, totally.

Tracy Harwood 24:18
Anyway, we'll start with this week's Pick. So I'm going to hand over back to you actually on this one. Do you want to start us off with your pick?

Phil Rice 24:27
Sure. Mine is a nostalgia pick of sorts. I found it while kind of hunting for stuff related to this Machiniplex collection that we're talking about because this was made in that same era, made about 14 years ago by a guy named misfit. And it is a it's a music video for What a Day for a Daydream by Lovin' Spoonful. Actually don't know how 14 years ago I don't know how he got away with releasing this nowadays it would be. It would be absorbed into YouTube monetization thing and it wouldn't be a big deal. How he got this done back then without a copyright strike, I don't know. But it's an amazing piece of work. It's made in Half Life 2, or maybe Garry's Mod and, you know, as well, I'm honestly not sure. When I saw it back when it was released. I have no idea like, I guess I have a general idea of how it was made, but I don't know how they pulled it off. Like it's it's really something it's a one shot video, as far as I can tell, of a man walking through a street, lip synced singing the song. And all this action is going around on around him and behind him. And it's extraordinary. And he's oblivious to it. Yeah, he's walking through it, basically just not paying any attention to that while daydreaming basically falling apart around him.

Damien Valentine 26:00
And getting progressively worse. Yeah,

Phil Rice 26:03
absolutely. I mean, with explosion sounds and all this sometimes the explosions dwarfing part of the song at points, and it's just amazing. And it just, it's such a nice contrast between this song that is kind of, you know, nostalgic, and dreamy and happy sounding with this war torn background. In the end, it makes it hilarious. But in a way that you don't, you don't get the feeling that it's trying to be hilarious. But it is because of that juxtaposition of different things. So I had seen this back when it got released. I was wowed by it. Then I stumbled upon it. While looking through some other videos that came up in my, in my feed. And thought, yeah, let's revisit this one because it's not part of that collection. It's largely forgotten, I would think. And it deserves to be remembered. It's a good one. What did you guys think?

Damien Valentine 27:06
I thought I loved it. And obviously, the other films you've chosen this match are much more much newer, this looks just as good as these other picks, made with more modern games, and released more recently. And I think that's a testament to the quality of the film and the Half Life 2 Source engine. Because it just it looks so good now, and I looked at it can't possibly be 14 years old, but it is. And that impressed me I really liked the way that it was done it it looked like a one shot thing. But if you look at the end of the credit when it plays out, some text comes up but the making of it and it says the singer died 27 times.

Phil Rice 27:52
I couldn't tell if that meant that there was that many takes and they stitched or if it took it's like a Rube Goldberg machine right that you you set it up, but it doesn't work in the one time you get it. Well, that's the one year release. Yeah, I kind of felt like it was that that it was they had to try it at least 27 different times to finally get it because there's some elements I think of that chaos that are random. Yeah, like you know, the way the explosion blast damage is going to work at all that so

Damien Valentine 28:19
reel at the time went wrong. Yeah, it was a really good pick. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 28:25
I enjoyed it very much. I thought that the technic technique that he used was very difficult, especially using the I believe he writes in the comments to the film on YouTube that he used the Half Life 2 hammer engine is hammer tools. Anyway, they're the tools you use the tools to create the pathing for the main character to walk. I also liked the fact that he took a fairly fairly popular trope of the singer in music videos walking while stuff happens around them and behind them. But but added enormous amounts of irony. Because here's this person out for a daydream. And you usually think daydreams are out in the, in the fields with flowers and in the woods and stuff. No, no, he's in the middle of a goddamn war between gorillas and the fascist government and he just out daydreaming along while all this chaos and stuff so the irony of that makes it so funny. Such a great idea. It was very impressive. It was funny, but also as you added the lot of meaning to it as well. The irony adds meaning to it. That's one thing I like about your pics Phil, your pics, you usually it's because humour is such a strong important, important part of your, the way you look at the world and how you like drama and films and everything. And, but I love the fact that you oftentimes will add that sort of darkness or that irony underneath that biting irony underneath that is so intelligent and funny, and smart. I always like the choices that you make that hit it like that. That's just great. This was a really, really fun choice. And excellent film, everybody should watch it.

Tracy Harwood 30:23
Absolutely. I mean, I really loved it, too. I mean, obviously, I picked up on the, you know, the having died 27 times making the film. And then that shot just prove it, absolutely hilarious. But you know, what I was going to do when I was when I was sort of watching it, I was going to critique the, the sound design on actually, because you can hardly hear the song over the raid that's going on around the character times. But of course, that's the whole point of this video. It's not a music video, it's a carry on, regardless Daydream in this post apocalyptic kind of world where nothing matters any more than the the for the kind of the lead character, even though the world is doing its very best to drown out his daydream. Yep. And also, this is I think this is the irony bit that I just love. This guy is a singer and a performer. And he's looking at that camera, no matter what goes on around him, no matter where it is. So rather than kind of being a music video, it's actually a really clever kind of observational piece. And you know what, even though this is 14 years old, it's also a contemporary picture of what people do now. Just kind of stuff in in the most inappropriate scenes. I don't know about you, but I've seen far too many YouTube shorts of people doing dance challenges or filming in the most absurd environment they can like, I don't know, the middle of a five lane motorway or in front of the wild bear in Yellowstone or kind of teetering on the edge of a cliff edge or something. Clearly just post it up on YouTube. So there you go, I think machinima here has beat all these idiots to it, and how funny and what a great pick.

Ricky Grove 32:09
I think the issue of not hearing the song as much as you might in a in a regular video is ameliorated a bit by the fact that the song is so classic. Everybody has heard this song whether you know the name in the group, it because it's played in everywhere, grocery stores, dental offices, we've heard it relentlessly so the iconic status of it makes it that you already know the song. So it's not I totally

Phil Rice 32:38
agree. I think that's exactly why it works is because the song has such familiarity. You can be pulled away from it, and brought back and you you're okay with it. If it was a new song of some kind? That would be bad for him. But yeah, no, I think that's exactly why we're pretty That's right. Brilliant.

Ricky Grove 32:58
Oh, it's real, I'm glad that we're looking at Half Life 2, or any Half Life videos, because I think the level of difficulty in creating them, good ones, not just throw off stuff. It's always interesting to see those people who accept that challenge, and then create something interesting. So I urge you everybody to watch this, it's, it's a great example of what you can do with this, with this engine with some intelligence and skill.

Phil Rice 33:25
And I'll close with this one additional observation that that's interesting about this movie is it's a scripted sequence. This was not recorded live, the whole thing is what's called a map file that can be loaded into the game, and it will play back in that way. Probably took him 27 different times to tweak things so that the singer wouldn't die. But this is a sequence that runs in the game, which makes it not that unlike something you would put together in iClone, or Unreal, and your other than the fact that there's the game mechanic and the player is a player. You know, it's it's a scripted sequence of events. That's, that's fascinating to me, because at the time, I'd it certainly wasn't easy to do, or even possible to do something like that with straight up real time animation tools. iClone was around but it was it was quite a bit more primitive. It wasn't even in the same category of basically, it's a professional tool now. Like there's no question. Yeah. So yeah, it's that much more impressive. But also it's I don't know I just find that part. Interesting. It also kind of harkens back to original machinima, which was a sequence you'd load up and watching the game. And it's interesting that this is that's the approach he used on this. If they had tried to just capture this live in some kind of multiplayer are setting triggering all that. Oh my goodness, what have been insurmountable? Yeah, but the fact that it was a scripted sequence that he could run in, okay, so it falls apart there. Let's go back and tweak this or make him walk a little bit this way instead, a lot of a lot of craft went on there. And, you know, technically this was something that Mystfit may have done as a solo project. You know, those scripted sequences often are you know, I mean, look at look at, you know, Damien's show that he does now is, is a handcrafted thing, a scripted sequence. Nobody can accidentally die in his show, I don't think but the concept is simple. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 35:44
Friedrich Kirschner's films that we talked about recently, you know, the one where he created that artistic experience in whatever the sandbox environment

Phil Rice 35:56
Unreal Tournament games, I think, Well,

Tracy Harwood 35:57
yeah. Sorry. similar sort of process to that. Sure. Good point, Phil. Yeah. Anyway, all right. Absolutely. fantastic pick. Hope you enjoyed that. That's it for this week. Join us next week. And if you want to get in touch with us, of course, you can talk to us at talk at Completelymachinima.com. And that's it from all of us. Bye for now.

Ricky Grove 36:20
Thanks, everyone.